Thoughts about this weekend…

What Stephen Harper will be celebrating this weekend.

What Michael Ignatieff will be celebrating this weekend.

What Jack Layton will be celebrating this weekend.

Liberals imploding

Watching the Liberals destroy themselves is more fun than… Well, anything! It is no coincidence that Coderre complained about the Rosedale Gang on the same day Ignatieff came out saying he was going to bring forward a motion of non-confidence. Too bad for Ignatieff that his own party has no confidence in their leader.

Iggy, some advice: pour yourself a nice stiff glass of rye. It works for me every time.

Ignatieff on the run in Quebec

Well, that didn’t take long did it? Quebec Liberal MPs didn’t even wait 48 hours before starting to snipe at Ignatieff. See below:

Now watch the floodgates pour open over the coming weeks. Iggy is far in over his head that his own MPs aren’t even sure he actually knows what he’s doing.

Priorities

Sometimes I just don’t get it.

Everybody and their mother’s uncle know that Michael Ignatieff is trying to force an election before the economy recovers. He sees it as his best chance to take power. So you’d think the Liberals would have had some sort of economic message yesterday when Harper was doing that Tim Horton’s event. Did they? No.

Instead, they protested a Canadian economic success story.

Still, federal Liberals jumped on Harper’s no-show at the United Nations yesterday as further evidence of how Canada’s clout on the world stage has diminished under the Conservatives.

“Mr. Harper does not believe in multilateral institutions … deep down he is an isolationist,” said Liberal MP David McGuinty (Ottawa South).

Don’t get me wrong. I understand that tactically, you don’t want to let your opponent get their message out cleanly so you want to be able to interject yourself into the story as well. But this probably isn’t the best way to go about doing so. Playing transparent political games and looking like you care more about what an outdated international body with a spotty record of any tangible achievements thinks about us at the expense of a good news day for a Canadian icon, Tim Horton’s, just isn’t the path to power.

But, by all means, keep up the good work Liberals.

UPDATE: Stephen Taylor says it better than I ever could.

Ranting about the Liberal Flag ad

Struggle as much as you might, and it is very difficult to think of a time when the Liberal party of Canada has ever come up with a more offensive and wholly untrue piece of advertising. In case you have not yet heard, the Liberals sent out a postcard to homes in New Brunswick depicting a worn out Canadian flag sewn onto a backpack, with the slogan “We used to wear it with pride.”

Outrageous.

Michael Ignatieff has sunken to a new low, and he’s brought the whole Liberal party with him. It is in fact, absolutely disgusting that the Liberals would insult Canada like this. Our soldiers are risking their lives to bring safety to little girls who want to learn to read and write so that they can become educated and live free lives, happily, heathily, and successfully.

What would a soldier think to see that? What would a family of a fallen soldier feel after seeing that?

Apparently one woman, whose husband is on his third tour of duty in Afghanistan is demanding an apology. This shameful act deserves an apology from Michael Ignatieff to all Canadians, given in the House of Commons.

Anything less falls well short of redemption.

Okay, that’s the end of my rant.

Hey, it’s Friday everybody, drinks on me tonight! (Not really.)

On opportunism

How many times have we heard the Conservatives being accused of playing political games? How many times have the opposition parties said Harper is unwilling to work with them? It’s always seemed like a bunch of hyper-partisan garbage to me, but now it seems we have irrefutable truth. The NDP, and the Bloc Quebecois, are supporting the government. In fact, Gilles Duceppe said he will be supporting the motion because “There’s nothing bad in it.”

The Conservatives are putting forward some of the most beneficial reforms to EI we’ve seen since its inception. It is obvious that the Conservatives have been working hard on the economy since the crisis began.

Michael Ignatieff on the other hand, has been floundering. Nobody trusts him, and who can blame them? Out of nowhere when he had a real opportunity to work with the Conservatives on EI reform he decided to pull out and try at all costs for an election. If people so ideologically opposed to the Conservatives as the NDP can decided that the Conservatives are working hard enough to deserve support, how can the Liberals have an excuse to try and pull the plug?

It could be called pure political opportunism, but then, it’s a bad opportunity because the Liberals are looking at getting squashed in an election with these poll numbers. It guess it’s just blind greed.

Iggy must have a deal in place

I haven’t had much to say over the summer, but all the recent election speculation got me to thinking. Why is Ignatieff hurtling towards an election campaign *now*? We’ve seen polls come out over the last couple of days that show the Liberals steadily 3-5% behind. Why would he want to go into a campaign he’s all but certain to lose?

Then I heard Bob Fife say on CTV News Channel (around the 4:00 mark) that the Liberal strategists are privately saying 120 seats is their best case scenario. 120 seats? Even Bob Fife says that won’t win them the government.

That’s when it hit me.

Ignatieff must have a deal in place with Layton and Duceppe already. It’s the only thing that makes sense why Ignatieff would be pushing for an election so hard all of a sudden. He knows he doesn’t have to win the government in the campaign, he can take it after the election by bringing back the coalition. That’s why 120 seats is their “best case” scenario, because it means they could probably pull off the coalition without the help of the Bloc.

Blue Network?

There’s this page at BlueNetwork.ca, I’ve heard it’s run by some Matt guy out of Edmonton.

It seems suspicious to me, have any of you heard anything?

You know…

…sometimes I wonder if we’d be seeing headlines like this if we were more congenial with Jean Charest and didn’t spend a month back in the spring throwing Prime Minister Mulroney under the bus repeatedly:

Tory fortunes faltering in Quebec

Just saying.

When will they get it?

Just something I want to get off my chest here: When are the Liberals going to wake up and realize that soft-on-crime policies just don’t work?

Case in point, while the Liberals are doing their usual bait-and-switch of pretending to care about protecting Canadian families in the House their bagmen cronies in the Senate are holding up important legislation to crack down on crime.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson accused the Liberals of being soft on crime Tuesday, saying the Senate is stalling legislation needed to protect Canadians. “Liberal softness on crime is demonstrated again and again by gutting our crime legislation, tying it up in red tape and playing procedural games so that it never becomes law,” Nicholson said.

And what’ya know, maybe if the Liberals haven’t been sinking important crime bills for the last three years we wouldn’t see stories like this: Canada becoming a hub for illegal drug shipments